Safe Storage Options

[leon]

Hi Guys,do you think that the way we store our data these days will change in the near future. :question:

Toady we use External Devices, USB Drives and That Cloud Stuff. (not that I even consider Cloud Storage)

So I have a few USB drives put away with important Images, would these still be usable in 20-30 years, do you think. :shrug:

Thanks Leon :thumbsup:

[Crater101]

A few years ago I went to a two-day photographic seminar at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melboune, hosted by Dr. Les Walkling. One of the things I learned was that about three or four current "file formats" become obsolete around the world almost every month. Not just for images, but for files in general as well.

Their advice was to back up in at least three places - your PC, and two separate HDD's, and to back up in different file formats as well, basically creating copies of the same files in different formats. That was based on advice from the National Archives at the time. I can only imagine things have continued to evolve.

Do I think the way we store things will change? Very much - but don't ask me how!
Will it all be useable in 20 to 30 years? In all honesty, I don't know.

[ronson]

No one really knows what the future holds. With the quantum computing evolving more and more, in future we might move from bits to the qubits :)

Aim for a proactive approach to manage it. If you store your photos on CDs and see that it's harder and harder to buy new CD Readers/Burners, then consider moving to another solution. If you store your photos in format XYZ and is getting harder and harder to find applications who can work with this format, then consider converting to another format.

[leon]

Well said and thank you.

Leon

[Leo.G]

Many years ago on Beyond 2000 (or towards 2000, I can't remember) there was talk of using crystals to hold unimaginable amounts of data but the whole program went hush with any information and all of my searching on Google has failed to turn anything up. I'm guessing it went into military hands and that's where it will stay while we work with ever unreliable flash drives and other outdated technologies.


I still have many programs on 5 1/4" floppy disks, I should pull out and old drive and an old operating system (on old hardware) and see if any of it is still accessible.


I dislike the cloud, it interferes with my astronomy and photography!

[glend]

Don't count on thumb drives. My ex-wife still has Beta Max video tapes of our daughters dance recitals - with no way to watch them. I have supposed state of the art Canon digital tape cassettes that My old Canon video camera required, which i can only viewed played back on the camera.
The one thing you can count on with technology solutions is change.

Nothing lasts as well as my old family photo albums, containing photos back to the late 1800s.

[leon]

Agreed Glen nothing like a hard copy, and negatives.

Leon

[glend]

Leon, a word of caution concerning negatives, despite being stored in plastic sleeves (in binders in a dark closet) I have seen fading in some Kodak 400 black and white negatives from the 1970s. Many of the colour slides I have are still ok after 50 years, but earlier slides are faded due to less robust emulsion I guess.
We have to be realistic about how long any media can be stored. I shot some weddings in the late 1970s on slides, and the customers wanted a print album. The "print from slide" Ilford paper I used, while looking good for first five years, deteriorated after that. Scanning them would have preserved them, and the slides are still fine. So some prints are ok for long term storage, especially early 1900s black and white, but colour prints are not so stable in my experience.

[leon]

Well that is true Glen, I too found that some negatives especially colour can fad over time.
However I have a vast collection of Black and White Negs and overall seem to keep pretty well to date, they are well stored and in a cool dark cupboard.

I also have a 100 year old glass plate, quite a large one actually and that is as good as the day it was produced in my humble opinion.

Anyway only time will be the master at the end.

Leon

[dikman]

An interesting subject, I'm sure that better, more efficient and more durable methods will evolve - eventually.
As many are aware, hard drives should not be relied on for long-term storage of important information as they can, and do, die. USB sticks can also become unreadable and/or lose data. Anything that uses electricity is susceptible to failure due to power surges and/or spikes, sometimes the simple act of turning them on can cause it.

Some years ago, before streaming services, CD/DVD burning was a big thing. There were forums dedicated to the subject with some very bright people on them. They did much testing of different discs to try and determine reliability and durability of different brands. Some were found to lose data (which you wouldn't expect on a burned disc, where the data is "permanently" marked on the media). Bottom line is that long-term retention of data on discs is very much an unknown, and anything considered important should be re-copied at regular intervals.

These days we often have large amounts of data to store, and while SSD's are still electronic, and thus subject to failure, they are fast and relatively cheap for their capacity. The best way is probably to store the data on the computer and then back it up REGULARLY to an external SSD.

I haven't mentioned using the cloud because I consider it the least reliable as I have no control over it. I don't use it for anything.

Crystal does sound good, or maybe storing data in the sub-molecular matrix of a piece of titanium?:shrug:

[leon]

Thanks for your input Richard and as you said in time everything changes and new stuff will be invented it is up to us to keep up.

Leon